Opinion

Skittled: Who would have picked Longstaff to cut such a swath?

Rarely in the history of Australian cricket has one of such modest playing repute cut such a swath.

At Knox Grammar back in the mid-1970s, see, there was this bespectacled bloke by the name of Simon Longstaff – quietly spoken, debater, as athletic as a fridge – who was, by his own estimation, never disputed, the worst wicketkeeper of his generation. But he was brave. What fiery balls he couldn’t stop with his hands, he stopped with his body. And he so loved the game that after school he continued to play in the lower grades of the lower grades in Tasmania – which as things go, was pretty low.

Killing them softly: Simon Longstaff's report has set off a collapse.Credit:AAP

Who would have picked him, to be the most influential figure in Australian cricket since Dennis Lillee?

And not in a bad way. For as you know, the report he penned on the Australian cricket culture has pretty much wiped out the top order of the First Australian XI of administrators, and he is now working his way through the tail-enders.

When the final fall-out from the Longstaff report is done, we will, of course see a whole new slew of players of the Administration First XI coming out to take strike and ideally prevent strikes from those they will now be charged with administering.

But who will it be? And how will they rebuild? Most importantly, what stars should the new crew steer by?

Thank you Simon, that will be all. The opening bat for the under-14Ds can take it from here...

The first thing for me is to welcome all you new folk, you ladies and gentlemen. As you know, we have tried to follow the AFL playbook here – we need to have an administration that looks a lot like the people we want to be playing the game in the rosy future we are hopefully pushing to. That is we want people on the board to be a good mix of males and females, of same ethnicities that make up wider Australia, ideally from all over the country, and of different cricket abilities. Yes, we need former Test players on board, but also those versed in running and playing community cricket. And yes we need people of great business acumen, but also those who truly understand the spirit of the game, and what makes the volunteers who run the game across our brown and pleasant land tick.

As to the first thing on the agenda, that one is easy.

You will see it on the run-sheet.

Big job: Cricket Australia CEO Kevin Roberts.Credit:AAP

Item 1. Television rights. We are in deep trouble.

And that’s no exaggeration. As you know, just a few short months ago, we did a $1.2 billion deal with Foxtel and Channel Seven to take the broadcast rights off Channel Nine. There was a great deal of celebration at that time, and they were very happy themselves. But not now they’re not!

In the first place, just about everyone the TV networks did that historic deal with has gone. And in the second place the ratings after the first one-day match were nothing less than devastating!

For a match like that on free-to-air, Channel Nine would have expected something around the million viewers mark, across the five major cities.

Well, on Sunday, Foxtel got ... 205,000 viewers.

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That, friends, is nothing less than a disaster. For cricket, for Foxtel, for the new era of broadcasting. Yes, early days, and of course when you go from free-to-air to pay television you expect a drop. But 800,000 viewers gone with the wind? Where have they gone to?

Perhaps other sports on free-to-air, perhaps to movies on Stan, perhaps they’ve gone for a long walk.

But the job you have inherited, is to get them back. We need to get more people playing the game, caring about the game, and watching the game both at the grounds and on television.

And right now, that has never been a more difficult task. After the issue earlier in the year with the flagrant cheating in Cape Town, a lot of people swear they have just lost all interest in the game. And our One Day team has lost so frequently in recent times that they’re doing a victory lap when they win anything so much as the toss. People don’t want to watch, and won’t be drawn to watching, a national team getting regularly flogged like that.

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In short, what we are delivering up, is not remotely what the networks paid such big money for.

Our task is get everything back on an even keel. It will take time. It will take wisdom. But as a starting point, I believe we need to get back to basics. We need a national team we can be proud of both for its results, and for its behaviour. We need to reinvigorate the game at its grass-roots level and demonstrate that we care about that level of the game, too.

We need to demonstrate that the administration of the game is stable once more.

We need, ultimately, to get back the spirit of cricket. You heard me. That might be too touchy-feely for some, but too bad. It is what has been lost, and it is why so many have turned away from our great game.